By TRAVIS HAY, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, August 31, 2004

The Cure made up for the Curiosa Festival concert at The Gorge it canceled last month with a near three-hour performance titled "An Evening With The Cure" at Everett Events Center Tuesday night.

The 9,000 capacity venue was roughly three-quarters full, making for a spirited show -- but if the concert had been at The Gorge, which has a capacity of 22,000 it would have felt noticeably half-empty.

Fronted by Robert Smith, who wears black eyeliner, red lipstick and frizzes out his jet black hair to look like a gothic Albert Einstein while performing, The Cure treated fans to an emotionally uneven set of songs that spanned its 25-year career.

The band came out to a grinding industrial music and then the droning guitars of "Lost," got the show started. A few surprises came early on during the performance including "Love Song," "Lullaby" and the classic "Fascination Street" from 1989's "Disintegration." The set peppered newer material like "Alt.end" and "End of the World" with more familiar songs such as "In Between Days" and "Pictures of You."

Throughout the night Smith's voice was spot on, but his selection of songs for the set list was baffling. Each time the group had an opportunity to carry the show by playing some of its more cheerful material it switched gears and opted to play dark and depressing songs, making for a night of emotionally up and down songs.

However, Smith and his band made sure fans got their money worth by performing some of the Cure's best-known material and by playing not one, not two, but five encores.

The first encore was slightly saddening, consisting of "The Drowning Man" and a few other older gems. For its second encore the band reached about as far back as it could in its catalog, performing "Three Imaginary Boys," "Grinding Halt" and "Boys Don't Cry," all of which date back to 1979. The songs are some of the more poppy and upbeat material the group has recorded.

After the three-song trip down memory lane, the group had the crowd wanting to hear more high-energy songs. The group could have easily followed the uptempo ending of its second encore with more lively material such as "The Lovecats" or "Close To Me," both of which were oddly left out of the 28-song set.

Instead, the Cure played three moody songs, including "M" and "The Forest." The song selection took the crowd from three peppy pop gems to a group of doom and gloom doldrums. The fourth encore continued the pattern of gloominess, ending with a slightly lengthened "Bloodflowers."

For its fifth and final encore the group finally got it right and performed the dance-friendly "Why Can't I Be You" from 1987's "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," ending The Cure's uneven two-hour-and-40-minute performance on the happy note the crowd wanted to hear.